RAWALPINDI: The Rawalpindi Cantonment Board (RCB) has started survey of domestic and commercial buildings in the cantonment area to check whether these were constructed according to the approved building plan or not.

“The basic aim of the new survey is to streamline the building department as mostly owners of the multi-storey buildings constructed in the cantonment without the approval of building plan by the civic body,” said a senior official of RCB.

He said theRCB had collected less fee of building plan due to low public interest to get the approval of building plan from the civic body.

“The building inspectors and regulation officials helped the people construct the building without approval from the civic body,” he said.

“Despite the mushroom growth of construction in the cantonment, the building plan fee was less than Rs600 million,” he said.

He said that RCB would also impose fines on those who constructed commercial and domestic buildings without the approval of the building plans from the civic body.

He said that the imposition of fines would start soon after the completion of the survey.

“After the survey, theRCB will be able to fix the responsibility of ignoring the violation on the building department officials who failed to check the illegal buildings and did not launch any action in the past,” he said.

He said that the civic body did not increase the fee but wanted to expand its network and brought all the illegal structure into tax net. “After this survey, the RCB will be able to implement building bylaws and fire safety measures as well as those items listed as essential safety measures in the developed countries,” he said.

Published in Dawn, December 29th, 2024